Parallax Graphics
Parallax Graphics, Inc., was an American display adapter manufacturer that developed high-specification video cards for various platforms. The company was founded in 1982 as Parallax Systems by two Cornell University graduates.
History
Parallax Graphics was founded as Parallax Systems in November 1982 by two Cornell University graduates, including Martin "Marty" Picco.[1][2]: 13 The company's first products built on the duo's electrical engineering thesis paper and were developed and testbenched from within one of their garages.[1][3] They soon hired five other engineers, all ex-employees of graphics controller manufacturers.[3]: 368 Parallax soon moved into a proper office building in Sunnyvale, California, by the summer of 1983.[3]: 368 As the founding duo lacked the business acumen to market the company's wares, the duo hired a chief executive officer to manage the company that same year.[1] The company's first product family was called the Rampage Graphics Terminal.[4] The initial entry, the 600 Series,[5] and was unveiled at the National Computer Graphics Association Conference in summer 1983 at the McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois.[3]: 383 Rampage was a color graphics controller designed around a proprietary bit-slicing drawing processor capable of drawing 12 million pixels per second. Its instruction set comprised 85 primitives,[4] including single operations for polygon, box, circle, and vector drawing commands, as well as modes for opaqueness–transparency, solid flood fill, stippling, outlining, and cut-and-pasting.[3]: 368 It was released initially for Digital Equipment Corporation's Q-Bus–based computers and was lauded for its high speed.[1][3]: 368 The company later developed in 1984 a variant of Rampage, the 1000 Series, for Multibus systems as well as for Q-Bus.[1] This rendition of Rampage increased the drawing operations per second speed to 88 million.[5] Starting with the 1200 Series in late 1986, the company began developing entries in the Rampage family around VLSI CMOS gate arrays, with the 1200 Series using three.[1][6]
- ^ a b c d e f Reghbati, Hassan K.; Anson Y. C. Lee (1988). Tutorial: Computer Graphics Hardware – Image Generation and Display. Computer Society Press. p. 23. ISBN 9780818607530 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ Staff writer (May 2010). "Peopleware". EContent. 33 (4). Information Today: 13, 15 – via ProQuest.
- ^ a b c d e f Pournelle, Alexander (October 1983). "The Fourth National Computer Graphics Association Conference". Byte. 8 (10). Byte Publications: 366–378 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ a b Staff writer (1983). "Parallax Systems". Digital Design. 13. Benwill Publising Company: 117 – via Google Books. Unknown month.
- ^ a b Lewell, John (1985). A–Z Guide to Computer Graphics. McGraw-Hill. p. 228. ISBN 0070374570 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ Wilson, Andrew C. (January 1987). "DEC Graphics-Board Vendors Provide Low-Cost Alternatives". ESD. 1 (2). Sentry Technology Group: 35 – via Gale.